Festivities, Museum To Honor Firefighters

When Orlando citizens spotted a fire in 1885, they ran to the town hall's 30-foot bell tower to sound the alarm.

The signal alerted members of the newly formed Orlando Volunteer Fire Department and signaled residents to turn out with blankets, ropes and ladders.

In 1985, an emergency telephone call to the Orlando Fire Department is handled with the aid of computers. Dispatchers then alert professional firefighters, trained in medical aid, water rescue and hazardous material spills.

Citizens no longer need to haul out their ladders each time the fire department responds to one of its alarms, now numbering 16,000 a year. All citizens have to do now is to get out of the way of the emergency vehicles.

During the past century, the department changed from an underequipped group of 57 volunteers to a high-tech division of 305 fully paid workers. The Orlando Fire Department is celebrating that progress when it marks its 100th anniversary on Oct. 13 in Loch Haven Park.

Public festivities, starting at 1:30 p.m., will include displays of equipment, free blood-pressure checks, demonstrations of the Jaws of Life extraction device used to free trapped people, and a tour of the new fire department museum called the Orange County Historical Musuem Addition, Fire Station No. 3.

It will be a chance to honor all firefighters and to note the changes in their methods and equipment, said OFD representative Lori Van Scoyoc.

Melvin Rivenbark, OFD chief from 1968 to 1973, said one of the major innovations occurred a couple years after he joined the department in 1941. It was then that the department began using a high-pressure fog spray to fight fires.

Before that: ''We sort of threw a whole lot of water on it.''

Compared with today's highly trained paramedics, firefighters in the 1940s learned only simple first aid. ''There was not any formal training required then,'' said Rivenbark, 72.

Today, the Orlando department averages 15,000 hours of continuous training a month in a wide range of skills.

Although he praised the advanced methods of today's hazardous waste team, Rivenbark said firefighters have always faced danger. ''A fireman's life is made up of being around hazardous material and situations.''

Charlie Parker, OFD chief from 1973 to 1977, recalls that when he joined the force in 1950, most of the runs were for fires. In 1957, there were 713 alarms with damage estimated at $137,076.

In 1984, 70 percent of the 16,281 alarms were medical-related. Fire damage was $2.7 million.

In addition to the high-pressure fog spraying, Parker said another major change was the introduction of cannister masks in 1952 in an attempt to filter out hot particles.

Despite the danger, firefighting

often has been alluring. Frequently the attraction was heroism, as Rivenbark believed, but sometimes it was just economic.

Arthur Flick, 77, started with the Orlando Fire Department in 1929. He remembers the reason he took the dangerous job: He needed work during the Great Depression.

''I didn't think I'd stay there long. I didn't like it -- sitting around the firehouse and nothing to do,'' Flick said. ''But I went to my first fire and I kind of liked it.''

His first action came a couple weeks after being hired when a truck carrying barrels of fruitfly spray caught fire. Flick and other firefighters fought the blaze with hand-held extinguishers.

''It was just exciting. I've been a fireman ever since,'' Flick said. He stayed with the department 39 years, until he retired in 1968.

In recent days, Flick has helped restore the museum's 1908 horse-drawn steamer used for pumping water out of lakes. He said it could pump 500 gallons a minute.

The museum, which will open Oct. 9, is the city's oldest standing firehouse.

Built in 1926 for $16,900, Fire Station No. 3 originally stood at the corner of Dade and Orlando streets in College Park, said Jean Yothers, curator of the Orange County Historical Museum.

The museum also has an 1885 hose cart and a 1915 fire truck -- the city's first motorized fire truck.

Other displays include a photographic history of the department and a 25- foot brass sliding pole.

Fire Station No. 3 closed in the early 1970s, when a new Station 3 was built in College Park, and was moved to its current location in Loch Haven Park by the John Young Science Center, now called the Orlando Science Center. The building has been refurbished with the help of the Orlando Fire Department, Orange County Parks Department and $58,883 from the Orange County Historical Society.

The museum will be operated from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday through Friday. Yothers said the museum is looking for retired firefighters to be guides.